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The Little Text File That Could

It’s just a string of text. What can that do to an industry? Well, things seem to be moving at a rapid-ish pace now that people have had time to evaluate ADS.TXT and the implications it would have on their bottom lines.

Publishers particularly seem to be embracing the technology a lot quicker now that they’ve had some time to digest everything. Something like +44% of the top 1000 publishers on Alexa have already embraced the technology. That’s up drastically from a month ago when just 12.8% of publishers on the list had updated their web servers with that little snippet of text.

In fact, ADS.TXT is even getting a bit of a push from the buy side. Digitas published a letter telling the industry that they’ll no longer work with publishers who don't have an ADS.TXT file running on their sites.

Not everyone is seeing things through rose-colored glasses, though. Companies are already trying to manipulate their way into ADS.TXT files. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised. They were pretty quick in angling their way into the equation. In fact, they’re sending blind emails and calls to people hoping to get included:

"Technically, Ads.txt is very sound. But as with most types of fraud, social engineering is the weak link,” said Pooja Kapoor, head of global strategy, programmatic and ecosystem health at Google. “I am concerned that social engineering will hit some of the torso and tail [publishing] partners, and will cause some of the behavior we are trying to prevent."

It seems to me ADS.TXT is working just like it’s intended to already. Fraudsters are out. Publishers are regaining control of inventory. Legitimate agencies and marketers are using ADS.TXT files as a barometer of quality.

It’s amazing what a little snippet of text can do in a billion-dollar industry. The best solutions are often the simplest, indeed.

“Overall ads.txt is a great industry initiative, but I don’t think it is the silver bullet to solve all of our problems that we are hoping it might have been,” said Mike Moore, associate director of programmatic partnerships for GroupM.

Ads.txt is an IAB Tech Lab project that was created to fight inventory fraud in the digital advertising industry. The idea is simple; publishers put a file on their server that says exactly which companies they sell their inventory through. The file lists partners by name, but also includes the publisher’s account ID. This is the same ID buyers see in a bid request, which they can use as a key for campaign targeting.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Lab introduced ads.txt as a tool that can help ad buyers avoid illegitimate sellers who arbitrage inventory and spoof domains. Still confused? Read the explainer below.

By creating a public record of Authorized Digital Sellers, ads.txt will create greater transparency in the inventory supply chain, and give publishers control over their inventory in the market, making it harder for bad actors to profit from selling counterfeit inventory across the ecosystem